Character Spotlight—Wesley Dodds’ as The Sandman
DC’s New Golden Age run of comics is bringing back and reinventing some classic characters from the 1940s and 1950s. One of the first characters to be introduced is Wesley Dodds’ The Sandman.
When someone says Sandman, you probably think of Neil Gaiman’s character of Morpheus or Dream from Gaiman’s Vertigo comic and the Netflix show. As The Sandman, Wesley Dodds first appeared in 1939 as one of the mystery men characters popular in the 1930s and 1940s who interestingly enough had prophetic dreams.
To say DC brought Sandman back from the dead, would be surprisingly accurate. Dodds initially died protecting the power of Doctor Fate from a supervillain.
In the Knight Terrors comic book event, Insomnia is searching the dreams of heroes to find the nightmare stone. When Deadman, who happens to be possessing Batman’s sleeping body, needs to find out more information about the stone, he uses Lazarus resin to reanimate the corpse of Wesley Dodds. Thankfully, Dodds’ trademark gas mask kept the comic clear of lots of pages of a fifty year old corpse. Although that would have been in keeping with the horror tone of the Knight Terrors storyline.
You might be glad to know the new Wesley Dodds stories don’t use the undead version of Dodds (although that could be interesting). Instead, the new stories (the first issue was released in October 2023) takes us back into the 1940s to both reintroduce the character and give new life to his attempts to fight crime.
Dodds’ is interesting character who has a secret identity, but doesn’t have a costume. Instead, Dodds wears a business suit and a gas mask, which is a classic 1940s look (and looks a little better than some of the superhero costumes from the 1940s – we’re looking at you Alan Scott as the Green Lantern, what were you thinking?).
As a scientist, Dodds created a number of sleeping gas formulas that he uses in his crime fighting. We are probably more familiar with villains like Batman’s Scarecrow using of fear gas to commit crime, avoid capture and generally terrorize innocent people.
The sleeping gas gun is a great combination of a tool to fight crime, a means of delivering justice and an interrogation technique. In the first issue of the new series, Dodds uses his gas to incapacitate a criminal with a tommy gun while also inflicting horrifying visions as torment for his crimes which also allows Dodds an opportunity to interrogate the criminal.
Dodds uses his logical and scientific mind to solve crimes. He is aided and tormented by his dreams which predicted future crimes, making his stories an interesting combination of detective fiction and fantasy.
The Justice Society of America was founded by Dodds. In doing so, he created a classic comic book institution that would be repeated in organizations like the Justice League and then satirized and criticized with versions in Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Garth Ennis’ The Boys.
Later, Dodds acquired a sidekick, Sandy the Golden boy, who did have a rather interesting costume. Sandy would take over from Dodds as the Sandman after he sacrificed himself to save the power of Doctor Fate.
Originating in the Golden Age of comics, Wesley Dodds is a nostalgic look back at the origin of the types of superheroes we take for granted while also giving us stories of battling everyday criminals and evil beyond the scope of human conception.
Pick up your copy of Wesley Dodds’ The Sandman #1 of the six issue mini-series. Issue 2 of Wesley Dodds’ The Sandman has only just been released (these are Amazon affiliate links which will provide me with a small income, but won’t cost you any more).